Ever since the Food Safety Modernization Act was signed into law in January 2011 and the act’s Produce Safety Rule was proposed two years later, fruit and vegetable growers have waited for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to finalize the regulations they will be expected to follow on the farm. Now that the FDA has done so — the final Produce Safety rule was printed in the Federal ...

(DLG). After having successfully passed a test in practice, the DLG Test Center Technology and Farm Inputs (Deutsche Landwirtschafts-Gesellschaft – German Agricultural Society) recently awarded the PAL-VITAL feeding bowl for broilers of the German manufacturer PAL Bullermann with the test label “DLG FokusTest”. Already during design and development of the feeding bowl, the ...

The commercial growing and packing sector will be intimately familiar with the quantity of waste produced during the processing of the various fruits and vegetables they handle. The ultimate destination of this waste is what is changing. Landfill, animal feed, recycling and now Anaerobic Digestion are all destinations for the waste from this sector. Landfill used to account for a ...

International Trade Exhibition company ITE Uzbekistan and its partner I.T.E. Exhibitions & Conferences Ltd. (United Kingdom) are glad to invite Your company to participate in AgroLogistics Uzbekistan 2015 The exhibition covers every segment of the fresh produce business, features players from all the world's markets, and offers a complete overview of the market for all products and ...

As a result of new dwarfing rootstock selections, improvements in crop protectants, and better methods of postharvest handling and storage, production of sweet cherry is increasing around the world. New sweet cherry cultivars that allow for improved mechanical harvest have also been introduced, and semi-dwarfing and dwarfing rootstocks have improved the potential for developing high-density ...

Cornell Distributor American Industrial Equipment continues to find innovative uses for Cornell pump. In this instance they find a prosperous uses for Cornell’s self-priming pumps. While displaying Cornell pumps at the Sacramento Food processing show in February, AIE was approached by the maintenance team from a well-known tomato processing facility in Stockton, California. This plant ...

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced that USDA will invest $52 million in grants to support America's specialty crop producers through the 2013 Specialty Crop Block Grant (SCBG) Program awards. The funding includes 54 block grants to U.S. states and territories that will support 694 initiatives nationwide. These grants will assist producers of fresh fruits and vegetables and help ...

Syngenta Crop Protection, a pesticide manufacturer based in Greensboro, N.C., has corrected pesticide labeling violations stemming from incorrect labels it gave to a pesticide distributor in Tangent, Oregon, according to a settlement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Syngenta has agreed to pay a penalty of $50,100. “Mislabeled pesticides are dangerous because they may display ...

Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists are mapping an array of county-level data from Maine to Virginia on weather, soil, land use, water availability and other elements. Then they'll use their map to model potential crop production and find out where local food production could meet current and projected demand—and where it won't. Until recently, low fuel prices have contributed to the ...

China has its sights set on exporting its fruit to the United States. And that's OK with growers in Washington, who harvest the bulk of America's apple crop. Having the world's No. 1 apple producer as a competitor may seem counterintuitive, but growers say opening U.S. borders to Chinese apples means American farmers should in turn be able to get a foothold in the country's lucrative and growing ...

A University of Florida-led research team’s development of a tracking system could change the way companies ship fresh fruits and vegetables, letting them know which produce is closest to expiration and providing consumers the freshest products available. Jeffrey Brecht, director of the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences’ Center for Food Distribution and Retailing, ...

Massachusetts-based integrator KC Enterprises is now using VTScada as the software component of the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems they develop for the agriculture industry. These systems help farmers to reduce costs by automating irrigation based on weather forecasts and sensor readings from the soil and air. SCADA systems use Human Machine Interface (HMI) software such ...

Reducing high food losses and waste will be critical to improving food availability, achieving food security, and reducing stress on natural resources in the fast-growing Near East and North Africa (NENA) region, FAO said. The region relies on imports to meet over 50 percent of its food needs, yet it loses up to a third of the food it produces and imports, including about 14-19 percent of its ...

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP) have launched a joint project to tackle the global problem of food losses. Around one-third of all food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted each year, amounting to 1.3 billion tonnes - or enough food to feed 2 billion people. The three UN ...

Employs cloud computing, sensors, and smartphones to grow delicious mandarin oranges Tokyo, July 7, 2011 - (JCN Newswire) - Fujitsu Limited and Sowakajuen Co., Ltd. today announced the launch of field testing related to the use of ICT in the cultivation of mandarin oranges in Japan. The project aims to improve productivity in growing the fine-quality, delicious Arida ...

With the exception of energy consumption, where there is still much to be done, the Dutch are global leaders in greenhouse horticulture. The quality is high, and nowhere else is the use of water and pesticides so low. Even so, demand for innovation, sustainable production and healthy fruit and vegetables and high-quality flowers remains high. One innovation that would really help in this is the ...

In recognition of October as National Cooperative Month, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced that U.S. farmer, rancher and fishery cooperatives set records for sales, income and assets in 2012, buoyed by strong prices for grain, farm supplies and many other agricultural commodities. Sales by agricultural and fishery co-ops of nearly $235 billion surpassed the 2011 record by $18 ...

As students head back to school in the coming weeks, Bon Appétit Management Company has found a new way for its chefs to include tasty summer produce in their menus throughout the fall and winter, and a means to further support local Ohio agriculture. For the first time ever, Bon Appétit chefs at Ohio's Case Western Reserve University and Oberlin College will serve ripe summer ...

How to prevent insects, bacteria, viruses and weeds from infesting fruit, vegetable and other plant and food consignments and then spreading across the world is the focus of a four-day gathering of international experts which began at FAO today. The annual meeting of the Commission on Phytosanitary Measures (CPM), the ...

Under the "Fresh From Florida" marketing campaign offered by the state's agriculture officials to stores and consumers, people are encouraged to buy things that are grown and raised in the Sunshine State. Alligator, tomatoes and, of course, oranges are on the list. One thing isn't highlighted: Florida beef. That's because, unlike many other states, it's nearly impossible to buy beef that's been ...